Archive for September, 2011

Until a few years ago, I knew not even the name of my maternal Great-Great Grandfather. He was one of the figurative “Brick Walls” genealogists fear. I made a major break-through last month when I discovered the village in Germany from which he emigrated in 1854. As is usually the case, once you can identify the ancestral village, a hundred years or more of records and information pours fourth– as it did for me last month. I also met some wonderful new cousins. As an added bonus, I even found a photograph portrait of Gustav as a grown man that had been sitting in an obscure book on a shelf for over 130 years. (It is the only known image of him.)

You can follow my adventures and watch the process of analyzing old German church books as I publish my findings on the Hasselbacher Website.